Salt isn’t regularly considered a spice, nor is it discussed as a vitamin like A, B, etc. But isn’t it necessary in small amounts for humans?
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Only organic molecules (and not even all organic molecules) are considered vitamins. Even though salt is essential, it is not created through organic processes (EDIT – not really what ‘organic molecule’ means, but i’m leaving it so as to keep ELI5), and so it is considered a ‘mineral’ rather than a ‘vitamin’. Things like Calcium and Iron also fall in this category.
Another point to keep in mind is that Vitamins are species-specific. For example, we need to eat Vitamin C because we cannot make it ourselves, but Felines CAN make Vitamin C in their own body. So from the perspective of a cat, ‘Vitamin C’ is just another chemical their body makes automatically, rather than being a ‘Vitamin’ that they need to find in the environment.
Vitamins are specifically organic molecules (anything with carbon-hydrogen or carbon-carbon bonds). Salt is NaCl, so does not qualify.
There are four different types of [essential nutrients](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutrient#Essential_nutrients): vitamins, amino acids (protein), fatty acids (omega 3 and omega 6), and minerals. Salt is a mineral. More specifically, sodium and chlorine are minerals (nutritionally), and salt contains both.
salt is categorised as a mineral – minerals are equally essential for life but are chemically different
minerals are much simpler and you can find them on the periodic table as they are just basic elements (sodium, calcium, chloride, etc.)
vitamins are very complex compounds based on structures of carbon and hydrogen atoms (you can look at their chemical structures on google)
great question!
Salt is a mineral in “vitamins and minerals” that are necessary for human health and life that we extract from food.
Potassium, iron, calcium, etc are necessary minerals for metabolic processes. Cell replication, enzyme production, and cellular communication use those materials.
The reason they aren’t considered vitamins is that they are present in the natural world without organic processes to produce them.
Salt would go under the essential minerals category. Vitamins used do be called “vital amines”, and refer to carbon-based molecules that are non caloric (not that they contain no energy, but that our body doesn’t metabolize them for energy) and which our bodies cannot synthesize while requiring these substances for health. Minerals don’t fall into this category. The term became its own thing rather than “vital amines” probably because it turns out there are substances that are not amines (that is, containing [the amine functional group](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amine) on the molecule) that are crucial for health that meet all the criteria I mentioned above.
(By that definition, technically speaking, Vitamin D is mis-named because our bodies can make it. Vitamin D appears to be a hormone our bodies use to regulate gene expression. It was likely classified before we figured out how our bodies make it.)
Essential nutrients include “vitamins and minerals”, salt is a mineral. Basically, a non-organic nutrient, in this case a source of both sodium and chloride, both of which are needed for various biological processes.
Vitamins are organic molecules (contain carbon). More specifically, they are amines, so organic molecules that also contain nitrogen (“vitamin” is short for “vital amine”). So if you look up the structure for a vitamin, you’ll see they contain a carbon structure and usually a nitrogen somewhere in there.
Table salt (NaCl) doesn’t contain carbon or nitrogen, so by definition it’s not a vitamin.
If you want to make up your own definition of vitamins then yes salt is a vitamin . Under the traditional definition, a vitamin is an organic chemical than is necessary for life. It’s not literally anything you need to live otherwise oxygen is a vitamin
Because it’s a mineral ?
While others explained what vitamins are and that salt is a mineral, I want to point out the logic problem.
Imagine you have a box with all your toys. In it you have many balls and a cube. Just because all your balls are in the box doesn’t imply that your cube is a ball.
The box represents all things essential to life, the balls are the vitamins and the cube is salt.
The logic in your question is invalid. If all humans are mammals, then why isn’t a German Shepard a human? If all elephants are heavy, then why isn’t a boulder an elephant? If all baseballs are round, then why isn’t the moon a baseball?
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